How the Civil War Changed Literature

How the Civil War Changed American Literature
The 1860’s was a time of numerous talented writers: Whitman, Emerson, Hawthorne, and Melville. Major writers experienced the civil war in their day to day lives and this began to change what they believed and subsequently changed what they wrote.
The abolitionists Thomas Wentworth Higginson studied Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose essays he explained as “starry with statements of absolute truth.” Emerson’s antislavery ideals helped influence positive war ideals. Emerson had spent decades writing about moral and cultural change and he viewed the war as necessary. However, not every writer was confident about the war like Emerson. For example, Nathaniel Hawthorne admitted in a letter the month after Fort Sumter that “I don’t quite understand what we are fighting for, or what definite result can be expected” (Eiselein 30). This uncertainty about the war was transferred into his writing. He traveled to Washington to write an article for The Atlantic and eventually published the essay “Chiefly about War-Matters,” in which he critiqued everything while also satirizing The Atlantic’s pro-war views (Eiselein 33).
Besides Hawthorne, most of the northern writers of the nineteenth century supported the war at the beginning. However, the writer’s attitude towards the war began to shift after the battle of Shiloh and the succeeding horrific battles. The harsh realities of the war began to trouble the writers. For example, while reading Emerson’s essay “The Poet” writer Herman Melville wrote skeptical notes within the margin. In response to Emerson’s belief, “the evils of the world are such only to the evil eye,” Melville responded “What does the man mean?” The horrors of the war made it impossible for Melville to agree with Emerson (Eiselein 47). In “Shiloh”, Melville describes the aftermath of a battle, and then states“(What like a…...

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Past civil wars during 1861 and 1865 have claimed the lives of many individuals who fought for freedom and against. Team B will express views of four wars through each member’s diversified backgrounds. The Battle of Shiloh, The Battle of Stones River both fought in Tennessee, and The Battle of Bull Run in Virginia as well as The Battle of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania.
According to "Africans In America" (1998), “On April 18, 1865, the Civil War ended with the surrender of the Confederate army. 617,000 Americans had died in the war, approximately the same number as in all of America's other wars combined” (Para. 18). In fact, theses wars with others have seemed to position a lasting stance on freedom for Americans no matter what color individuals appeared. Team B’s review of the civil wars may express what is unknown to some individuals, and what others family member fought for years ago.
Even though civil wars caused death, if changes had not happen many Americans may still be slaves. Civil war was needed to stop the opposing thoughts of diversity in America. Because, of the foundation set in America for everyone, which appeared to outcast some chosen groups normally in the southern states. North and south states viewed certain individuals as unequal to other humans rendering freedom to those entities.
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The Civil War was arguably the darkest moment in the history of America. For the first time brother fought brother and The Union had to fight to stay whole. Southern states believed in their right to own slaves and though Lincoln formally addressed that he would not interfere with that right, the southern population believed that Lincoln’s election would be, “the greatest evil that has ever befallen this country.” This wedge driven squarely at the Mason-Dixon line tore the United States in two, one half believing in slavery while the other half strongly opposing it. The social tensions between the north and the south began with the election of 1860. The south favored J. C. Breckenridge, while the north favored Abraham Lincoln. Anyone who knows anything about history knows that Lincoln won the 1860 election and became our 16th president. This enraged the south due to Lincoln’s view that slavery should not spread to the un-unionised territories, and so South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas seceded from the union shortly after the election. This created a huge communal deviation, as former kinsmen, now turned foe, were locked in combat - The Union of the north and the Confederacy of the south. At the start of the war, no African Americans were allowed to fight for either side. A law passed in 1862, however, allowed them to fight for northern states, though after the war a larger scale enlistment process was implemented......

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Civil wars since the end of World War II have lasted on average just over four years, a dramatic rise from the one-and-a-half year average of the 1900-1944 period. While the rate of emergence of new civil wars has been relatively steady since the mid-19th century, the increasing length of those wars resulted in increasing numbers of wars ongoing at any one time. For example, there were no more than five civil wars underway simultaneously in the first half of the 20th century, while over 20 concurrent civil wars were occurring at the end of the Cold War, before a significant decrease as conflicts strongly associated with the superpower rivalry came to an end. Since 1945, civil wars have resulted in the deaths of over 25 million people, as well as the forced displacement of millions more. Civil wars have further resulted in economic collapse; Burma, Uganda and Angola are examples of nations that were considered to have promising futures before being engulfed in civil wars.
Definition
James Fearon, a scholar of civil wars at Stanford University, defines a civil war as "a violent conflict within a country fought by organized groups that aim to take power at the...